{"id":5220,"date":"2015-08-04T13:14:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T17:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/?page_id=5220"},"modified":"2015-08-11T19:24:02","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T23:24:02","slug":"spotlight-on-jeffrey-samet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/spotlight-on-jeffrey-samet\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight on…Jeffrey Samet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey H. Samet, MD, MA, MPH, the\u00a0URBAN ARCH Consortium\u2019s Principal Investigator and\u00a0Professor of Medicine and Public Heath at the\u00a0Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

As told to URBAN ARCH Admin Core staff, July 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

\"jeffrey<\/a><\/p>\n

When did you realize you wanted to do research around HIV and alcohol use?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted to do research from the get-go. In clinical training I found the addiction issues fascinating and poorly understood compared to heart and lungs clinical issues.\u00a0 The year of medical school graduation was 1983 and patients with addiction problems were getting this new disease \u2013 AIDS.\u00a0 Thus my research path was emerging.\u00a0 I wanted to further study HIV infection in people who had addictions.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I wanted to go over the next two decades. Alcohol, per se, and HIV\u2014I really do give credit to Kendall Bryant, who was just beginning to address the HIV and alcohol problem at NIAAA. We had put in a grant to look at some health services issues with people with alcohol problems. He said \u201cI noticed in your bio that you run a clinic for HIV patients too, could you recruit a cohort of patients who have HIV and alcohol problems?,\u201d and I said \u201cwe can do that.\u201d And so, we started doing that and it made us start thinking. \u00a0There were a lot of interesting issues as time went on.<\/p>\n

How does your research with the international cohorts in Russia and Uganda impact your work as a clinician in the United States?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It makes one appreciate the system in which medical care is delivered. \u00a0Clinical research provides great insight into how to improve those services and the international insights can be very useful domestically.\u00a0 At times, in other countries, clinical teams do things really well and other times, they don\u2019t do things really well that way. But, being in a different setting where you can see how these diseases play out, has been, to me, insightful. \u00a0Seeing the international cohorts and the care that they get opens up new perspectives on care. \u00a0Another difficult issue is the extent to which people are dying in Russia, which contrasts what is happening in Uganda, people are not dying. \u00a0Good care makes a difference.<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy most about being the PI of the URBAN ARCH Consortium?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That one\u2019s simple. The colleagues you get to work with and it\u2019s really the incredible opportunities to turn good ideas into real projects and answer questions.\u00a0 \u00a0It is great to have colleagues in a topic area that we obviously think is interesting. Total pleasure there.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite URBAN ARCH cohort?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reminds me of \u201cone loves all one\u2019s children\u201d and not that they are all my children, but you get the idea\u2026not going there!<\/p>\n

What surprises you most about the URBAN ARCH research that has been conducted? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the most surprising outcome so far is the Uganda ARCH finding. \u00a0I would have bet on the side that heavy alcohol use in patients not on ART was going to have adverse effects on their immune progression as measured by CD4 count and it didn\u2019t. So that was a negative finding, but I thought it was really surprising.<\/p>\n

What are you most excited about when thinking about the future of URBAN ARCH?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We put together unique populations. Unique in part due to Russia and Uganda\u2019s international settings but even the Boston cohort with the extent of other drug use. They all have characteristics that open themselves up to studies that are hard to pull off in other places — that part gets me excited. Putting the grant renewal together gets me excited (and worried too –\u00a0 lots of work to do!).<\/p>\n

Tell the readers one fact about yourself that would surprise them. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

I stuttered as a young boy. You know, I remember going to a speech pathologist with my mom and after that, I didn\u2019t stutter so much. But, for years, I stuttered. \u00a0But the word from my brother and sister was that \u201cmom came back and told them before dinner that night that \u2018when Jeffrey talks, everybody needs to shut up.\u2019\u201d That\u2019s what the speech pathologist said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the stutter; he can\u2019t get in a word otherwise!\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there anything else you\u2019d like to add?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We appreciate NIAAA giving us the opportunity to study these important research questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey H. Samet, MD, MA, MPH, the\u00a0URBAN ARCH Consortium\u2019s Principal Investigator and\u00a0Professor of Medicine and Public Heath at the\u00a0Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health As told to URBAN ARCH Admin Core staff, July 2015 When did you realize you wanted to do research around HIV and alcohol use? I wanted to do research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10451,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5220"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5390,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5220\/revisions\/5390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urbanarch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}